You're right. I got the figure from here:

http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/sovietcollapse.htm

But other sources say that something closer to 20% is more accurate.

Maybe the 70% figure was from world war 2:

https://nintil.com/2016/05/31/the-soviet-union-military-spending/

70% during WW2 and 20% in the 80's is definitely plausible. I'll add that this wasn't some internal failing of the Soviets but was external: the United States ramped up spending during the cold war despite the Soviets asking for treaties to end arms production so they could invest in infrastructure and industry.

The U.S. did a great job making the Russkies feel like they were all gonna die.

It's debatable whether this tactic was ultimately good, but it worked.

These are good points, but I don't know how they're incompatible with the idea of trying to instigate a clash of civilizations between Christians (UBL saw the US as a Christian power) and Muslims. I mean, pretty clearly, there are dimensions to 9/11 beyond merely trying to cause the US to become entangled in conflict in the Middle East. The targets of the attacks (the WTC, the Pentagon, and the Capitol) were the symbolic financial, military and political centers of American life. Clearly the attack struck on multiple axes.

It's not. He clearly intended to do that, I'm saying that probably wasn't the extent of his intentions.

Not exactly symbolic considering the demographics of the victims. IIRC 25% of the people who died that day were either rich or well on their way to being rich, and that includes firefighters. We're talking 0.01% types. That's insanely targeted considering the methods they were using. Those were not good targets if all they wanted to do was scare average Americans into shopping less or rack up a body count or whatever. They were pretty clearly trying to terrorize a very specific kind of American, and by all accounts those Americans responded in exactly the way bin Laden wanted.

That's a conspiracy theory I hadn't heard yet. Interesting.

Look, despite the fact that you quoted my post you don't appear to have actually read it. I know what Biden said. I quoted it. It's there, word for word as well as the quotes from others. I acknowledged that there was no pending nominee and that he said during the election campaign and that McConnell misrepresented the Biden Rule. Democrats have no misrepresented the "McConnell Rule". You don't have to argue just to argue especially when there's nothing really to argue about.

Let's look at it this way. Biden said during an election campaign. Some Republcans basically said lame duck president. So, hey, let's just take the entire second term off. Some Democrats say congressional election so let's take every other year off in a presidents first term. There we go.

I guess, depending on what you consider uneducated. I have limited traditional college and a fair amount of technical education.

Better to be uneducated than "educated stupid" (as the TimeCube guy said)

Sure, some scholarly social sciences literature on terrorism argues that, as a tactic, the function of terrorism is not merely to kill civilians who live in some country or who benefit from some power structure, but specifically to kill civilians with the goal of making the general public of that society take some action. It makes sense that they would want to take actions that make elites feel threatened, because they had more influence, and were more capable of effecting the change that they wanted to see.

That being said, it's still pretty clear that the targets had symbolic meaning, even if their symbolic significance wasn't the only reason why they were chosen.

It's interesting to me that MacFarlane happened to come back after this post. Many of us have a reasonable grasp of the English language. Our constitution is written in a manner that doesn't require an English major or one with a law degree to understand. That doesn't mean we can't debate our conclusions about what we read but you certainly don't need a law degree to study the constitution. In fact, it probably helps if you don't have one.



So the party that fought for civil rights for black people specifically is now the party that believes in power specifically for white people?

See what I mean about not having a law degree? How an educated person can assimilate this worldview makes me proud to be maligned as uneducated.

Sometimes I wonder if he's putting his law degree to good use suckling at the hind tit of government.

Well alright, that's literal education. I always took your signature to be kinda political, is it not meant to be political?

ya people say this **** about software development and skilled trades too. Good luck with that pro se Supreme Court appeal.

Yes. Rather famously. There used to be these people called Dixiecrats who were basically Democrats that wanted their slaves back. They defected to the Republicans in 1964 after LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act. It was kind of a big deal. I’m surprised you’ve never heard of it.

Trust me wookie06, there are lots of ways you can win an argument but belittling someone’s intelligence or education is absolutely not one of them.

It it political and anti intellectual, it just predates his attempts at becoming educated.

Strom Thurmond died in the mid-oughts at a low point in racial tensions in the US. I wonder what would happen if a figure like him died now. At the time when he died, I think it was easy to belief that the legacy of Jim Crow and attempts to reimpose segregation after the 60s died with him.

Was just today reading about Jimmy Carter's first attempt at running for governor of Georgia in 1966, when he lost to the segregationist (and Democrat) Lester Maddox. When he ran again in 1970, he won, but he won by using dog whistles to convince segregationists that he was a segregationist, and by convincing progressive that he was a progressive. Of course he had always been a progressive, and apparently his inaugural address catapulted him to the national stage, when he declared forthrightly his commitment to racial equality.

Hard to comprehend how different Democratic politics was only a few decades ago (never mind Southern politics in general), but I'm sure that also means there's a lot that's been swept under the rug and is actually pretty similar. Insane that "polite society" in the South was talking about in the late 60s and in the 70s.

Yeah, I know your propaganda. All of the racist democrats decided to become Republicans after the Republicans screwed them over. Makes a ton of sense.



I know you've got this big man crush for him. I'm not belittling his education. Per se. He's just completely indoctrinated to the point that he can't think objectively. I don't like to get into this discussion here because you take it so personal for some reason but it's clear. Besides, you ****ing insult me all the time for education and supposedly being a janitor. Did you think those insults helped you win an argument?

So uplifting. CEOs really are the master race.

Only to the extent that some people like to pretend you have to be educated to have an opinion and you can only have ONE opinion once you're educated. It's pretty common here and you can see the discussion unfolding with Joncy.

LBJ was a Democrat.

u jelly

Weird how you always think that whenever a more educated person disagrees with you, huh.

Because it’s just so absurd! You’re talking down to a lawyer about being educated wrong about the law because his expert conclusion is personally inconvenient to you. And it’s not like it’s just this one time, or just this one subject. It’s any time the professionals of a field share a consensus that disagrees with your own personal random assumption. And, yet, they are the ones who are indoctrinated.

You are a very silly man, wookie06, and I always delight in pointing this out every time it happens.

If you’re insecure about your education or profession that is your problem. If you don’t like your rants against education or profession to be contextualized properly, then I suggest either doing it yourself or doing something about it yourself.

Ive seen academics almost come to blows over the dumbest ****, you have no idea what you’re talking about. The difference is that academics actually care about the subject and are willing to engage with their peers, instead of just, like, making up random **** because reality is too hard for them to accept and then dismissing what other experts say because it was the product of the wrong sort of education

So, unrelated, but I had dinner tonight with a person who honest to god believes in pizzagate and that Hillary Clinton was a Satanist.

It got me thinking. I think people buy into this because it's hard to deal with how confusing and opaque politics can be from a distance. It's hard to know who your enemies are. But if they're Satanist pedophiles? Much easier to accept that world than one with more complicated, human things going on.

Also fwiw I told a bunch of Christians I think (most) Satanism is just edgy larping and called Satan a literary figure. Which are pretty bold things but people seemed pretty accepting of my stance.

Is it weird to find it weird when people believe there are literally demons affecting people?

Well, that's nice. The funny thing is that it's not like I couldn't be educated in this stuff. I chose not to. Seriously, some education in law doesn't change language. Lawyers like MacFarlane are stupid. Period. My assumptions aren't random. They're informed. Now, I have admitted constantly that I study this stuff less now than before but that's because it's an absolute waste of time. I mean, obviously you guys are swaying the ignorant vote. Good on ya.

Interesting thing about this sort of thing is couldn't pedophilia be a real thing there and certainly somebody like Hillary who has helped her husband get away with deviant behavior be a part of it? And, if you're religious, demons aren't really a stretch.

Also, what the heck does that prove? "I don't understand topic X, but I could have understood it if I wanted too!"

Yeah, I'm not so sure about that (with that attitude, anyway).

Having said that, you certainly do see both conservative and liberal lawyers and judges coming out of law school. Though I would hope that there is some amount of mutual respect between the two groups, at least insofar as basic scholarship is concerned.

Yes, and if you find wild conspiracy theories convenient, then nothing is a stretch.

Who cares if there is? Seriously? Supposedly Scalia and Vader Ginsberg were friends. Did that make libtards more likely to respect his opinions?

All this time I had suspected that Wookie06 was somewhat trolling, but if he actually believes this then I don't know what to say.

Besides, you don't have to have a degree to understand things. In fact, having one might mean you understand it less. Like MacFarlane.

No, it likely didn't! Both Scalia and Ginsberg were / are highly educated. But a priori I wouldn't expect "libtards" (uneducated liberals) or "wingnuts" (uneducated conservatives) to appreciate how such education lends credibility to their political opponents, even when they disagree.

Do you really think that learning something makes you incapable of being rational about it? I.e., if I go to university and learn all about topic X, then I am no longer mentally capable of taking a step back from what I was taught, and publishing a rebuttal? (I seem to remember a profession that is actually based on this very intellectual activity, though the name of it escapes me.)

I mean, didn't Jon`C go to university and talk to a bunch of neoliberal economics professors (and / or read their papers), and concluded all on his own that it was a load of crock? And he wasn't even brainwashed beyond the point of no return!

It's kind of painful to think about, but it sounds to me that you don't even know the difference between education and indoctrination. Believe it or not (although there are some similarities), universities are not simply churches where people go to be brainwashed into a single point of view. Especially not in postgraduate education like law school.

Yes, if you had applied yourself im sure you could have been a lawyer. But you didn’t, and you aren’t one.

alright so at the risk of being accused of being a stupid educated person I’m gonna dump some goddamn facts on you.

Human language is complete ****ing garbage.

Let me be more clear here. I’m formally educated in logic, computer science, and just a dash of linguistics. Basically I have a four year degree in why natural human languages are useless for expressing precise concepts.

Have you ever noticed a lot of software being written in English? No ya haven’t. This is why.

Have you ever noticed a lot of laws being written in English? Yuh huh you sure have. You need a law degree to understand the law because language doesn’t ****in mean language bruh.

“Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press”

- What is speech? Speech is verbal communication. That means you are only allowed to say whatever you want. You aren’t allowed to write whatever you want, use sign language, dance, or expose your visage in any way. Congress is free to regulate what you are allowed to record, broadcast, and even just amplify using technology, because none of those things are literally speech.

- What is the press? Do you need a journalism degree, work for certain companies, ...? Do you need to own a printing press? Perhaps Congress cannot curtail the freedom of the press, but it seems they are perfectly entitled to define what the press is.

- Congress cannot regulate what speakers say or what the press publishes, but they are clearly able to regulate what people are allowed to hear and read. It doesn’t infringe upon your free speech just because anybody who listens to you gets thrown in jail.

“But that’s not what the first amendment means!” you exclaim. “Speech REALLY means all forms of expression, and it’s REALLY freedom to change your mind, not just freedom to share it, and” blah blah blah. But that ain’t what the text says buck o.

“Law doesn’t change language” my ass. The only reason this dreck is workable at all is because of a tradition of generations of lawyers and judges establishing a common understanding of what these laws ACTUALLY mean, because human language is completely inadequate for describing laws otherwise.

Thank **** for lawyers.

no they’re pretty random dude

****in lol



yes

Also, just to be clear, as far as I'm concerned: being educated doesn't necessarily mean attending university. What it means, though, is doing the things that people do while at university... it's just much harder to pull this off on your own, without the resources of professors and an academic library! What is really offensive to me, though, is to dismiss the hard work that academics (and a select number of very intelligent and hard working people who found a way to overcome all the obstacles and conduct legitimate research outside of academia), just because the conclusions of their efforts are in the opposite direction of your opinion!

Congress shall make no law which summarizes what free speech means

Being educated doesn’t necessarily mean being educated. For practical purposes, it’s good enough to have internalized just enough humility that you keep asking questions and just enough pride that you keep defending what you think. Everything else comes after that.

”I believe X, I don’t care why others believe Y, and I don’t need to defend X to you” is the attitude of an idiot loser.

Credentials are not the same thing as education.

So, Wookie, if going to law school actually hurts your understanding of the law, should we nominate somebody to the Supreme Court who has never been to law school at all? Should we elect a president who has never done a goddamn thing in his entire life?

How topical

I mean you could try to be a little more open-minded